Category Archives: The Media

Poynter Online – Romenesko, Chicago Tribune rejects “vote Democratic” request in death notice

The last line in a paid death notice for Ken Swanborn read: “In lieu of flowers, please vote Democratic.” Somebody at the Tribune deleted the request. “If it's considered discriminatory or offensive, they take the line out,” explains a woman on the paper's death notices desk.

It seems I will be on Air America this afternoon at around 5:30pm, discussing Sunday's posting, New Low For McCain Campaign: Obama == The Anti-Christ.

I guess things get slow in August.

Update: If you have an Air America membership, allegedly you can hear the clip via this Ron Kuby archive podcast. Ron Kuby, by the way, has an interesting history.

Ivan Carter makes an excellent observation in Media Studies — Including Yesterday's in LA Times, Have Major Flaw which appears at Daily Kos. Here's the start of it:

The study that was widely cited yesterday, and reported in the LA times, is inherently flawed.

It found that the media's coverage of Barack Obama was negatively slanted in comparison to that of John McCain. But to the extent the facts favor McCain, what the study concluded would not necessarily be true.

And to the extent the facts tend to support Obama, the study's conclusion of media bias against Obama (or in favor of McCain) would understate the bias that is in fact present. And, perhaps more importantly, the stronger the case in favor of Obama (and the weaker the actual case in favor of McCain) the more this would be so.  

There is no unwritten rule of politics or sociology  dictating that the objective facts, in the context of every single voting American's personal beliefs, were they to have perfect knowledge, must invariably favor both candidates equally.

In other words, just we should not expect coverage of Osama bin Laden to be 50% positive, so too it does not follow that the two major candidates will be equally truthful, equally coherent, equally sensible, equally gaffe-prone, and so on. Yet that is the baseline which media bias studies such as the LA Times's use.

Even with the 50/50 baseline they find that McCain gets a better press than Obama. But when you consider that facts have a liberal bias, that result is particularly striking.

A very long time ago, I was interviewed by Liz Davalos, of the local CBS affiliate, channel 4, for a story about what sort of information is available about us online and what we can do about it.

Apparently it's running tonight on the 11pm News, and maybe tomorrow morning too. If you are local and see it, please let me know if I was in it and how I did. (Unless I looked like a dork, in which case, let it pass in silence…)

One of the most interesting things in today's NYT is the chess column. Yes, the chess column.

Have a look at Chess – Ranking System Is Questioned After a Wealthy Russian's Rise

[Russian Millionaire Vladimir] Afromeev is now 54 years old. Eight years ago, he was not close to being among the top 100 players in the world. He was not an active player, and there were no records in databases of his games.

But in 2001 he began playing regularly in invitation-only tournaments. And he began winning at an unbelievable pace, often by beating strong players with ease.

His sudden success — well after the age when most players start to decline — raised eyebrows, partly because he is a wealthy businessman who only plays in tournaments against handpicked fields.

…

The following game between Afromeev and Maxim Novikov, a Russian grandmaster, is from an invitation-only tournament held in Russia in June 2007. It is worthwhile to note that it is not very often that a strong player loses with White in only 20 moves, but it happened to Afromeev’s opponents more than once during that tournament.

There's a word that's never used in this very artfully written and carefully factual article. I suspect the hand of libel lawyers. If this were a chess move, I'd give it a “!”.